Monthly Archives: August 2011

NCE: training the lowest common denominator?

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Right, this press gazette article then.

 Editors involved in a review of the National Council for Training of Journalists’ NCE qualification for senior journalists have urged the training body to continue emphasizing traditional journalism skills over the use of new media.

Why?

…“without the solid grounding of journalism, good news writing, accuracy and sound interviewing skills to support the technical ability to write for blogs/web/social networking sites, the quality of that journalism will suffer and will become indistinguishable from citizen journalism.”

Why?

[the] “ability to spot a story, conduct a strong interview and then produce clean, legally sound, well-structured copy remains the priority”, and that “with these key skills everything else (social media, video etc) will follow”.

All makes a weird kind of logical sense doesn’t it – Get the basics right first and the rest will follow.

But there is an equally important reason for picking up the NCE

 “Editors are now able to shortlist and recruit candidates who have passed the exam,” the report said.

Of course it would. It was written by the people who set (and charge for) the exam.

So far so business as normal with the old vs. new media debate.

What industry needs right now not what’s right for industry

Frustrating as it is, I’m not surprised by the report or the reaction to it. I’ve kind of moved beyond being annoyed by the continued blurring of the lines between NCTJ marketing and the ‘views of industry’. What annoys me about this report is that it’s so output driven – it’s all about getting the paper out not about the process.

Looking at the relative importance of things just underlines how output driven it it is.

What's important?

What better way to interact with readers/viewers and listeners than social media. It isn’t the only way but it’s a good way and yet social media is down the running order.  When your editor can’t afford to let you out of the office and you have to do all your work via computer, some web skills would be important in finding news stories wouldn’t they? So why are they languishing at the bottom of the list?

Because they are seen as a way of getting content out there not getting content in or helping with the journalistic process. They will always be less important than getting the paper/programme out.

The responses also underlines a general attitude from editors that they are only interested in trainees with the skills they need to run the newsroom.  Whilst that might be a very real issue for them (and perfectly valid), for journalism in general it’s training for the lowest common denominator not for the future.

What’s important for the medium

In my digital newsroom module I’ve been using  a 2009 Journalism Skills survey from skillset that outlines the skills gaps across new and trad skills.

The new skills gap by medium

I think it’s clear that the priority of choices is completely driven by the medium. When it comes to traditional skills the basics are there but, again, I think the mediums show through.

Traditional Skills by gap

I use this stuff to show that the mediums demand a set of skills but the importance is purely down to the medium. Learn all of them and inject  appropriate amounts of digital to help you along and your better placed to exploit opportunities across all the mediums.

In that sense its a much more honest and useful report and it underlines what this NCE report is really about. It’s not really about what’s important but WHY. That’s driven by the medium and it’s demands and in that respect it has little or nothing to do with a broad concept of good journalism. It’s more about feeding the machine.

Look further

Look, I’m not saying the NCE isn’t valuable or worth doing. It is. I’m not saying that the basic skills are not important. Unlike many of the editors, I’m happy to see the importance of all the skills mentioned. * But lets’ have a little honesty in this.

The truth is that whether you think that some skills are fundamental (basic?) or not when it comes to the new stuff the following is true:

  • Social/new/multi media does not come after journalism it is part of it.
  • They are not mutually exclusive from accuracy etc.
  • Just because some editors don’t need them ,doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable.
  • If you’re not integrating appropriate digital tools in to your journalistic process your missing an opportunity.

So if you’re a journalist looking at this report I’d suggest a more open mind . See it as checklist not a hierarchy. See it for what it is and where it has come from.

Above all else, don’t let people with an agenda dictate what skills you learn. The truth is that none of this is difficult and there are some great people, editors amongst them, yes,online. They are right across this stuff (trad and new) who can help.

And whilst we are talking about it – this and this as well. Oh and while you’re at it, this and this

* I wish I didn’t have to but if I don’t say this then I’m simply a neophyte who doesn’t understand what proper journalism is all about! Maybe I don’t!

 

 

 

Twitter: the emergency broadcast system and the journalist

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As you may imagine after yesterdays post, I’ve given a lot of thought to how journalists use twitter. Id been thinking about blogging a couple of key points to consider but Mary Hamilton beat me to it in a good (unless you’re Deborah Meadon) post on the Guardian website.

She illuminated a few things to consider when tweeting in times of riot:

  • Unless you can see it happening, don’t tweet about it.
  • Bear in mind that some people are making jokes.
  • Bear in mind that being scared of something happening isn’t the same thing as knowing that it’s going to happen.
  • If you see rumours, question them directly.
  • Get verification.
  • If you see something you know isn’t true, try to correct it.
  • If you’re tweeting about things you can see, be specific.
  • Follow people you trust to be accurate.
  • If you’ve been out looting and rioting, please tweet about it.

Developing the ‘be accurate about tweeting what you see’ point Mary makes an interesting statement:

Remember: if you can see it and you’ve got the means to publish information about it, that makes you a de facto journalist. So be responsible with your power. Be specific about where you are and what you can see.

As a journalist you should know that with great power comes great responsibility.

One way to read that list is ’if you are going to be on twitter during the riots then be journalistic otherwise leave it to the “journalists”‘ – and by journalist we are saying those who behave journalistically. Defacto or professional.

But could we take that a stage further? Could we say that essentially in times of crisis, twitter is now such an important communication channel that all none-essential users should keep traffic to a minimum. Should Twitter be left to allow the essential users (fire, police and media!) to do their job more effectively? Twitter becomes part of the Emergency Broadcast System.

I know the answer to that is no. Trying to restrict the use of twitter at any time would be like shouting at a hurricane to stop – pointless. The intrinsic value of the network at times like the riots is built on the diversity of the users. It’s also were the value of the ‘journalist’ rests – filtering that content.

But it does highlight one of the challenges we have as journalists using twitter:  not everyone uses it the same way we do.

Twitter without the rubbish

Twitter is a massively valuable journalistic tool. For many it’s a vital part of the process of ‘doing journalism’. So its going to be frustrating when people come along and mess it up. When people get in the way of the process. Wouldnt it be so much easier to find that lead if people would stop tweeting about their lunch? In short, it would be great if people could behave in a way that made our job more straightforward.

But that chaos reflects the dynamic nature of the network – the thing that makes it valuable. It is what it is. So we need to see this and any challenges it brings as an issue with our process.  When things like the riots kick-off, we the media need a different approach to twitter.

That’s not just because (I believe) twitter behaves differently during things like the riot but because journalists do.

Much as I believe that sticking to a basic journalistic process has massive value in social networks for people (journos and none-journos alike), there is an argument to say that just as the media takes on a different role (and a need to be responsible) during events like the riots, so, people who take the role of journalist in particular those who claim the title through employment by the MSM, need change their approach. How?

Well, on top of the good points Mary makes, the best way I can think to develop that is with a couple of questions:

  • Should individual journos only tweet about the event through official twitter feeds for their org, linking to that from their ‘personal accounts’?

Journalists personal motivations for being involved in tweeting clearly came through during the riots and often feeds became a mixture of personal messages and professional information. Normally this mix is fine but when the situation is so serious and the information is so important (and their job as a journalist demands a response) shouldn’t that response be removed from the personal?

Would that better reflect the temporal nature of the event and the powers and responsibilities that bestows on the journalist?

  • Should tweeting of live, ‘crisis’ events always be backed up with a presence on the main publication website?

I thought the Guardians use of a live blog in the riots was an excellent. Actually, in this instance, I thought it was vital. Not only did it give a valuable archive on which to build coverage, it also presented a single place where punters could go and get filtered, authoritative coverage.

Instead of users having to piece together the chronology and facts sifted from the truth and lies in the flow of tweets. It also gave reporters and others something to tweet to direct people away from the steady stream of rumours.

Power and responsibility

I know that some of the changes to process will always be dynamic and responsive; Who knows what the next event will be?

But I know that some of my thinking here (especially in my first question) is being driven by questions about where authority comes from and what that allows you to do. Where does the right to take responsibility for something come from?*

On social networks much of that is down to the quality of the relationship, the quality of your interactions and the value they add to the community.

But at times of crisis it’s not unusual to see the weight of the organisation a journalist works for being bought to bear in terms of authority – one day I am Andy the next day I am the Daily News.  – and that is the journalist changing the terms of the relationship.

You can claim it’s for the greater good but the relationship is still changed.

That shift is a little more fundamental and at the heart of the challenge of working online.

 

* For me that’s something that is distinct from taking responsibility – I can do this because of what I am compared to I do because of what I am. It seems common for people to see it as the act rather than the motivation

Mea Culpa: No news is news on twitter

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I spent a lot of time watching twitter last night. Watching the dynamics of tweets about the riots – the reports, the reaction and the rumours.

I retweeted a few things but tried to avoid directly tweeting. I had an opinion, some tweets I thought deserved a response but others responded in better ways. But then I did tweet:

Reporting that nothing is happening in your area/city? ask yourself is that really news.
August 8, 2011 9:21 pm via Osfoora HDReplyRetweetFavorite
@digidickinson
Andy Dickinson

I was frustrated by a steady stream of tweets from news orgs and journo’s outside of London (and at that time outside the confirmed trouble spot in Brum) tweeting that nothing was happening in their areas. Since when has journalism been about reporting something that hasn’t happened?

It was a generalised statement (well, rhetorical question) and people happily and appropriately began putting holes in it.

Of course it was worth tweeting. According to Martin Smith that’s how you stop the rumours…

@ no but it may help stem some of the wild rumours on here. #balancingact
August 8, 2011 9:25 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@martinsmith1979
Martin Smith

and those rumours where causing mass panic according to Brett Cullen

@ Im not saying that, Im saying reporting that something not happening in your area,at a time when there is mass panic, is news
August 8, 2011 9:39 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite
@iambrettcullen
Brett Cullen

Really? Mass panic all over the country? But we digress…

David Bartlett argued that’s what a journalist should do:

@ don't journalists have a duty to inform? Including to correct misinformation?
August 8, 2011 9:33 pm via UberSocial for BlackBerryReplyRetweetFavorite
@davidbartlett1
david bartlett

as did Neil Macdonald:

@ you're wrong Andy. Lots of tweets saying rumour riots here and there. Up to local paper to set record straight. We tweeted it
August 8, 2011 9:36 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@xxnapoleonsolo
Neil Macdonald

Then Louise Bolitin drove the proverbial bus right through my point:

@ actually, yes. I'm talking with other disabled, many are scared if fires start they won't be ab;e to escape
August 8, 2011 9:32 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@louisebolotin
Louise Bolotin

How do I argue with that? Push the point further and I’m in danger of suggesting that it’s fine for disabled people to be worried about burning in a fire!

So, according to twitter, the answer to my original question was a resounding yes. I was wrong and I held my hands-up.

Time and place

I still think that it’s right to question if journalists and media orgs should tweet ’nothing is happening’.

  • From a journalistic point of view statements without any context are not news.

Despite protestations of its importance ‘no news’ statements like that would never make the front page or head of a bulletin.  As Neil Macdonald pointed out that they where more information than news. Journalism as a source of information – very valid.

A few tweets did quote authoritative voices – police etc. That was better. Some proper information in there. Many did not.

  • Pushing out those statements assumes that tweets are a direct answer to the rumours.

Of course they aren’t – there is no connection to the source. Most didn’t link to the original rumour so how can people know what reports where being talked about? At best you show that nothing is happening at worst you amplify the concern to a new network.

  • It assumes that your tweets go in to the same networks and hold the same weight as those spreading the rumours

That may be true for some networks (see below), but the rumour will always travel further than the rebuttal and that’ll be beyond your network before you have any influence.  This is not like a celebrity apparently dying. It’s not a singular event that picks up momentum in the absence of any other information. This is a dynamic situation that is driving a lot of traffic. Generalised statements will get lost in the noise and new information replaces it. True or not the noise will swamp weak signals.

In this instance I thought that the ‘no news’ tweets simply served to amplify what the network already knew – at best a pointless exercise. Like spitting in the wind. At worse it created the idea of problem that wasn’t there.

I have to say (and did at the time) that Louises example proves the point.

Louise is talking to a specific network, one that she passionately cultivates and serves. Last night she talked specifically to them with information and updates that where directly relevant to them. It wasn’t rumour control, it was useful information. That’s not what a lot of the tweets where. But as she pointed out, the generality of my statement was just as bad:

@ but you just proved to me why I'm happy to see ppl tweeting that their neighbourhoods are quiet. Is reassuring for 99% of us
August 8, 2011 9:54 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@louisebolotin
Louise Bolotin

I found that last statement interesting though “reassuring for 99% of us”. I think that should be 99% of us on twitter. Which is my last point:

  • Panic on Twitter does not equate to real panic

Generalising does not help.

Mea culpa

Which is what I discovered and, of course, exactly what I did with my original tweet. Lack of specifics, a broad statement left me wide open. Lesson learned and, through experience maybe point proved.

I still hold my hands up.

WPHMI: Help me investigate for wordpress

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WPHMI - Help me investigate for your blog

A little while back I had an email from Paul Bradshaw asking me what I know about wordpress themes. He wanted to know how easy it would be to create a Help me investigate theme for wordpress.

If you don’t know what Help me investigate is then, in summary, it was an innovative service that allowed people to start and manage crows sourced investigations – go and take a look at the site (and blog). The site itself is no longer running but the code for the original site is still being developed 

The result of that initial contact is a plugin called WPHMI (WordPress Help me investigate). It takes the basic principle of HMI and integrates it in to a wordpress blog.

Why a plugin and not a theme?

Hold on Andy! Didn’t Paul ask about developing a theme not a plugin?

Developing WPHMI as a theme (a whole skin for a blog) fitted with my thinking that someone looking to set up HMI on a blog would probably set up a blog just for that. i.e. They would start a new blog that only covered the subject of the investigation. But the more I played around the more I thought that people may also want to integrate investigations in to an existing blog. They may already have established the blog within their community and building another resource away from there may make managing things tricky. So I moved on to the idea of plugin pretty quickly.

Whilst that may be more flexible in terms of integrating the functionality, integrating the design is less successful. By fitting in to an existing blog you also have to fit in with the design and given the thousands of themes out there, thats no mean feat. So the plugin is designed (at the moment) to fit in with the standard Twenty-Ten theme.

Again the idea is that you could install wordpress, install and activate the plugin and have things working ‘straigh-out-of the box’. *

How does it work?

The plugin page has a brief set of instructions but from a technical point of view…The plugin works by adding two new custom-post types – Investigations and Challenges –  and a custom user – Investigation Contributor. You create an investigation and associate challenges for investigation contributors to complete. It also adds a new taxonomy called Topics which is used to organise the investigations by theme.

Technically speaking, the management of who is working on a challenge, whether the challenge is complete or whether an investigation is finished is done using custom data in the custom posts. This has it’s limitations compared to running a whole new table in the database to hold the data but there you go. I did explore the idea of parent and child relationships to manage investigations and challenges but I couldn’t get my head round it.

What’s next

I’m not sure. The plugin works but it is basic. There is a lot of tweaking and I’m sure some proper programmers and wordpress people will know better ways to do what I have done (or be able to correct the rubbish coding I have used). But, in the spirit of HMI, I wanted to put it out there and see what people made of it.

But I do have a list of things that I would like to  add/do time willing

  • Custom RSS feeds for investigations and challenges - there are feeds for each of the topics.
  • A dashboard widget that tracks investigations and challenges
  • Make CSS more generic to improve compatibility with other themes

Maybe I should set-up a blog using the plugin to investigate improving it!

Important things to say

The plugin wouldn’t have happened if Paul hadn’t suggested it. The concept, format and design is all down to the original creators of the site:

The site was conceived by Paul Bradshaw, developed with Nick Boothand built by Stef Lewandowski. Journalists involved in the site have included Heather Brooke, James Ball and Colin Meek.

If you do decide to take the code and do more with it, that should always be made very clear in what you do. Credit them above all else.

I should also note that the plugin uses slightly modified version of a Meta-box script by Tran Ngoc Tuan Anh to create the meta boxes on the post pages.

So if you want to download the plugin and have a play then take a look at the WPHMI page for more.

* I know that wordpress now ships with TwentyEleven! If this plugin lives for any length of time in its current form then I would look at ‘phasing out twentyten support’ :)